A series of biblical readings and prayers from David L. Miller, senior pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Naperville, IL. David is the former editor of The Lutheran magazine and Director of Spiritual Formation at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

‘Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

Invitation

There is no sweeter invitation than to know you. Knowing you is peace,
Holy One. Knowing stills the deepest heart, the point where you and I are not
two but one, sides of a coin.

There is no distance between us. We are two sides of the same Love you
are, you so far beyond me and yet so much within me. You are my deep and true self
where I know who I am, and my heart rests in the extraordinary knowledge that I
am is an expression of your joy, a flesh and blood incarnation of you who are
Love.

Although we are one, you bid me to come to the mountain of the Lord, to
the place where I know you and learn again the wonder of who we are together,
as one Love.

Come, you say, come to the mountain, the place of meeting. There is no
sweeter invitation than this for it is an invitation to know, finally, what the
heart most needs to live, truly live.

So I come to this ‘mountain’ where no hope is too much, too crazy, beyond
belief or possibility. Here, I am with
you. Here, no one can interrupt or come between us. Here, my heart listens for
the instruction only Love can give, and these fingers speak what the heart
knows.

And from this place I rise in peace to live the peace you are, the peace
you give, the peace of knowing the Love from which we come, the Love which lives
ever within and bids me to come and know. Always.

Of everything for which I give thanks this day, I give thanks for this above
all.